Spice Temple

19th June 2011

With my parents last night in Melbourne before they left for Brisbane, we decided to meet for a third meal for the weekend and met brother and his girlfriend came in for dinner. We had a walk down from their hotel to Crown and decided to try Neil Perry's new Chinese restaurant, Spice Temple.

We walked in and enquired about a table. Even though it was a Sunday night we had to wait in the downstairs bar for them to set up a table. Downstairs was a cool bar, however it was very dark and difficult to read the menu for some of our party (although i mostly blame that on parents having old people eyesight).

An extensive wine list and wide selection of drinks that you would expect from a Neil Perry restaurant and with Rockpool next door it was hardly a surprise. Halfway through our first drink we were ushered up to the main dining room. Not quite as dark as the bar the room was elegant but still dark and clubby but with simple quality wooden table and wooden blocks featuring chopsticks and soup spoon.

Given the design of the menu, the fact there was 5 of us and that the waitress stated that the dishes do not all come out together, we decided to all choose one entree and one main each and share the food. We possibly should have consulted each other as given our family's love of spice, we choose a lot of the red dishes on the menu (designated extra spicy).

The entrees which came out in various orders consisted of Smoked Bacon & Chili Hunan style egg noodles (great flavours and a hint of chili in between a healthy serve of quality egg noodles), Lamb & Cumin pancakes with a chili paste (pancakes had good flavour and were crisp on outside and the chili paste was also good), hot & numbing dry Wagyu beef (quality aged and dried wagyu beef with a spicy marinade that left the lip tinging a little bit), crispy quail in 5 spice (soft delicious and heavily spiced quail pieces left on the bone) and my favourite Caramelised Pork spare ribs (juicy tender meat with a excellent caramelised sauce with toasted sesame seeds).
A great selection of entrees each offering a different flavour and offering quality cooking - a major step up from a standard Chinese restaurant.

Next up was the main courses. This is where some collaboration on the spiciness of the dishes may have suited us better as we ordered 2 hot & numbing dishes (Pork and duck) as well as a dry spiced Kung Pao chicken that came served with a mountain of red chilis and some black chilis that we were told not to eat even though the black chilis stuck to the chicken & cashews. There were comments about why the dish would be served with the chilis especially the black ones which did indeed seem to stick to every piece of food that we tried to eat and someone accidentally did eat at one point.

However all three spicy dishes were cooked extremely well and offered a quality of flavour and texture and offered a decent hit of spice that few restaurants would be brave enough to attempt. The duck was beautifully pink and my favourite of these dishes. We also had 2 less spicy options and unfortunately these were served as some of the last dishes out. I am not sure if this was a factor as the spice diminished the more subtle flavours of stir fried beef with black beef and Guangxi style pork belly with coriander, peanut, red onion and sesame seeds. These 2 were my least favourite dishes as the pork belly didn't seem to match well with the coriander and red onion and the beef was obviously quality and cooked well but came in a big slab (difficult to eat with chopsticks) and the flavours of black bean offered very little.

I then followed this with the desert of Cherry Jellie & Peanut chocolate bar. The cherry jellie was the true star and the presentation being wrap in paper was great. The chocolate was good but there was little peanut flavour. However i thoroughly enjoyed it and despite the chili being present and tingling the lips whilst eating the main course, i had subsided by the time the desert came.

A very good meal and a big step up from regular Chinese restaurants. As Spice Temple opened after the 2011 Good Food Guide was published i would not be surprised to see it in the 2012 Guide and worthy of 1 Hat. (Note; As of the 2012 Good Food Guide this has been awarded 1 Hat)